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How I optimised my life to make my job redundant

118 points by henrik_w 11y ago

pmx 11y ago
Task switching absolutely kills my productivity but I think that may be down to procrastination. I procrastinate more than I would like and once I've gotten myself going I need to keep momentum. If something kills that momentum - like switching tasks, I'll quickly find myself checking my email or looking on Reddit, PH, or HN again.
- frandroid 11y ago
  Procrastination is a form of task-switching, you're just switching into things that are less productive. :) I'm trying to improve on that matter too.
- falcolas 11y ago
  Task switching tends to kill software development productivity, period. My own personal experience mirrors that outlined in the "Human Task Switches Considered Harmful"[0] blog post; interruptions can takes minutes or hours to recover from, leaving me functionally unproductive for this time that I'm re-building my mental context. The OP even admits to this ("That’s not just for the sake of clean audio, but it’s for my own concentration"), they just seem content to accept the lack of attention for most of their tasks. Personally, I've found that I am much more productive when I focus on one task to completion (or to a natural stopping point) and then switch tasks. In series, I can complete a set of tasks in a fraction of the time it would take to complete them in parallel. Also, my colleagues on phone calls tend to appreciate my attention to what they are saying. [0] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000022.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000022.html
- fizixer 11y ago
  It's a fallacy to assume if you're not able to task-switch efficiently, there's something wrong with you and nothing to do with the nature of your work. As an example, Feynman would avoid distractions as much as he could, would make excuses to stay away from administrative duties at Caltech to dedicate solid chunks of time to his research work. And when you're thinking in abstractions while programming, interruptions and task-switching is the last thing you could afford in order to stay productive.
fweespeech 11y ago
> I often worked until 1am. I’d usually start at 6am. I always worked on weekends, albeit with leaving time for family activities as well. The laptop came on every holiday and I had to work very hard at balancing productivity with time out. Like I say, that’s not very palatable to many people but this is what it took for me to get this amount of stuff done. Does anyone else feel like this falls under a combination of "workaholic" and luck of genetics? Even with caffeine, I simply can't do two nights in a row with less than 7 hours of sleep and retain a level of mental acuity I need to "work" effectively. Of course he may not be meaning this literally but I have the feeling the way that is written he is.
- JimiofEden 11y ago
  Perhaps, but I've fallen both in and out of this mindset, so I think it might have more to do with your state of mind. In my mind at the time, something needed to get done. And I was the only one that could do it. And I'm too proud to admit failure, so damn the torpedoes, and full steam ahead, about a weeks worth of no sleep, caffeine induced, coding frenzy. Both before and after that experience however, I'm the opposite. Unless it's a task that I own, and I feel like I NEED to do, and won't rest until it's done, then it's whatever man. Let me sleep. So for my situation, maybe it's all about getting yourself into that mindset and hyping yourself up for something. (Though all things considered, I was mega burnt out after what I did and would not ever try it again.)
  - fweespeech 11y ago
    Perhaps. Out of curiosity, were you doing something that had a high-cost-per-defect? [e.g. All bugs lead directly to a loss of money for the company and/or accounting uncertainty on exactly where the money/inventory went]? The reason I ask is generally the only people I ever see saying stuff like that tend to be engaging in projects with low-risk-defects that don't translate to 4-5 figures of financial losses per defect but rather a "meh, I'll spend an hour later figuring it out and it costs me basically $0" kind of defects.
- vtlynch 11y ago
  What I find striking about this, and other parts of the article, is how they seem like they must be contradictory. He spent 19 hours of his day working? Thats exceptional. A feat I certainly couldnt achieve. But... he also spent an hour and a half playing high intensity tennis and/or taking regular walks to the shops near his house? That dosent sound like 19 hours of work to me. And he balanced his personal life and relationships whilst working 19 hours a day? Or did his family only see the benefits in the last 18 months (as he states near the end of the article)? So often when I read these "hack your life/productivity" articles and actually try to figure out the logistics, it just does not seem to check out.
fideloper 11y ago
Having known people exactly like this, I'm going to guess that Troy is blind to the people he affects around him while he is working so "hard" and jumping around so much. Unless he has some super-human abilities, doing things like stopping to "churn out a para or two" is NOT helping his productivity. I'd guess he's succeeding despite of that workflow (many hours spent) instead of because of it. > "That might mean being on a conference call and also responding to emails (I’m happy listening and writing at the same time)". The people who I know did this missed very important details of meetings, and even has to be clued in that someone was speaking to them. They constantly relied on others around them to pay attention to the important details of any meeting. Definitely led to confusion and issues (and blaming). I stopped reading after the first section because all of this brought back memories (and a really strong negative reaction) of such crazy ridiculous ego's I've worked with in the passed. I won't believe Troy is doing life better than us. He's working (very hard!) and will be successful, but at the cost of others around him and ultimately to the detriment of his quality of life.
- fweespeech 11y ago
  To be fair, I've known a handful of people who can do that effectively without getting lost. However, I'd say they are the minority and its really a "luck of genetics" thing rather than a learned skill. No one I've met who claims it was a skilled they learned actually can do it. I'm willing to believe people exist who do, but I suspect they fall under the "luck of genetics" category and just convinced themselves they learned it. Or it could be a mix of both. However, 90% of people I've met that do it do meet the OP's "blindspot" criteria.
  - fideloper 11y ago
    Genetics would def. be part of it, I think that's fair. One person I'm thinking of in particular is VERY intelligent, which (unfortunately for those around them) helps them cope with (get away with) this behavior.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- 11y ago
ericson578 11y ago
After reading that article it did not answer the question of how he made his job redundant. It did tell me to hyper multi task and be more efficient (wow ground breaking /s). Am I being obtuse? Was there an answer in there that I missed? I was really curious how he quit his day job...
- jimmy0x52 11y ago
  Same. I was looking for how he was able to survive financially and quit his job. It just seemed like many paragraphs of bragging and rambling (and boasting about his speaking/blogging engagements).
  - dharma1 11y ago
    maybe he started writing about that but got sidetracked context switching :)
    - MyNameIsFred 11y ago
      After 2 years on HN, I finally created an account so I could upvote this comment.
  - UK-AL 11y ago
    Conferences/talks/pluralsight/consulting. His a big name in ms world, so he could do it pretty easily.
  - mgiannopoulos 11y ago
    You can check the first link in his post where he explains more of that http://www.troyhunt.com/2015/05/so-dust-has-finally-settled.html http://www.troyhunt.com/2015/05/so-dust-has-finally-settled.... as well as the first link in that post http://www.troyhunt.com/2015/04/today-marks-two-important-milestones.html http://www.troyhunt.com/2015/04/today-marks-two-important-mi... :)
- rwallace 11y ago
  You might have missed it among all the bad advice about multitasking and working stupid hours, but he did give one piece of good advice in all that. His job was to do with systems administration/operations, and what he did was to write down everything he knew or had to learn about how to do his job, in the form of public blog posts, which he refined based on public feedback until they actually worked and were understandable. Then on the way out the door, all he had to do was give his successor the keys and the URL to the blog posts.
us7892 11y ago
>> I’m happy listening and writing at the same time Right. Stop multi-tasking in our meeting when you should be paying close attention and participating. I'm tired of having to repeat myself because you're writing an email.
- mcdougle 11y ago
  As others have said in this thread, it's entirely possible (and, in a corporate setting, very probable) that he could've been writing an email during a time in the meeting where is attention wasn't needed. I can tell you that there have been plenty of meetings I've been in where I'm hard at work on something actually important while listening at the same time, because I know I'm not missing anything. I know which meetings are important and require my full attention (a requirements meeting for a new project, for example) compared to something I can just kinda half-listen to (e.g. the weekly team meeting where everyone discusses what they've worked on since the last meeting)
Xophmeister 11y ago
85 percent of your financial success is due to skills in "human engineering," your personality and ability to communicate, negotiate, and lead. Shockingly, only 15 percent is due to technical knowledge. -- Carnegie Institute of Technology Uh oh...
s3nnyy 11y ago
He claims that he is using a Lenovo W540 "for punching out emails laying on the couch". My colleagues and I are forced by our employer to use the exact same model and everybody hates it. Lenovo omitted designated buttons and as a result the navigation is a mess: One clicks, if one wants to scroll and vice versa. Maybe Troy is using a mouse when he works from the couch?
briandear 11y ago
I don't know this guy; I've never heard of him until now, but based on what's I've seen, the theme seems to be "how awesome I am." Something about this rubbed me the wrong way, like a lesser version of Tim Feriss. We get it; you're really busy. Multitasking is less efficient: http://simple.icouch.me/the-waiting-room/multitasking-psychology-get-more-done-by-doing-less http://simple.icouch.me/the-waiting-room/multitasking-psycho...
- theklub 11y ago
  Yeah, those are the types of people who are like "You too can be rich just like me, buy my ten step book to learn how!"
cosmolev 11y ago
So, basically the guy is a CPU.
brightball 11y ago
I'm terrible with task switching also and have had to do some reduction in my side stuff to keep my sanity. I have code projects that I want to build, but I can't focus on those while focusing on the code for my full time job that is by far primary. I had a programming business with a lot of legacy contracts when I shut it down to go work full time, so I sold off the business to another guy just because it was killing my focus. Now I blog and present about a lot of tech related topics where in almost every situation it's something that overlaps with my full time job. That way, just as he's describing, I'm more thoroughly researching and articulating things that will pay dividends at work as well. The overlap makes it like getting paid (sometimes) for side research that I would have done anyway and it keeps me sane. Also makes it easier for my wife to understand me spending time outside of work reading about this stuff. :-)
aesthetics1 11y ago
This almost made me sick. This article is pages of bragging basically. "Check out all my things", "I have money and can buy other people's time", "I quit my job", "Here's a pic of my wife". His tips? Give me a break.
- juliangregorian 11y ago
  Haters gonna hate. He figured out how to milk Pfizer for a salary to underwrite him while he built his personal brand. So what if his github account is weak, this guy hacks life.
- SZJX 11y ago
  True. This guy surely has a massive ego and talks all the way about "earning money", "building brand" and "socialization" and stuffs, which I don't think a reliable engineer in his right mind would put first. Not to mention the "ending quote". Some of what he wrote might be a bit helpful but the base tone just doesn't sound right for some reason.
kriro 11y ago
The post only implicitly answered how the job was made redundant. I'm assuming he lives off what used to be sideincome (consulting, training courses, blogging etc.) now? The way he works sounds pretty unhealthy (or at least it would be for me) and is often the exact opposite to what I strive for. I don't write mails while waiting I let my mind wander around and try to "do nothing". I have batches for handling email and don't check outside those times (surprisingly the world doesn't stop if you don't answer email for most mails). If I'm in a meeting, I'm in the meeting. If the meetings seem irrelevant the right course of action is trying to get rid of the meetings not hanging around but writing mail (imo) Basically feels like he needs to "actively do stuff all the time". I'm quite the opposite and try to actively do nothing (my brain will work really well during those times but it's not looking active). And when I'm doing something I try to optimize doing exactly that and not squeezing in other stuff.
- cylinder 11y ago
  I would lose my mind if I was like this all the time. Sometimes it feels great to be very busy as you get a nice flow and momentum going that leads to more productivity. But I need downtime to retreat into my head. I don't answer phones or emails on weekends. Guess I'm destined to be poor.
jimwalsh 11y ago
So this guy works a ton of hours, after work hours. He works from home it appears. He is constantly double dipping his time multiple ways. How does this actually effect his family life? Some of this write up makes him come off incredibly selfish with his time.
- mgiannopoulos 11y ago
  "How does this actually effect his family life?" It's probably where the wife part of his article comes in.
JamesBarney 11y ago
Most research on multi-tasking shows that the difference between self described multi-taskers and others is not the ability to multi-task but the awareness of cognitive deficits induced by multi tasking. My take away from the article is "having a supporting wife, multi-purposing, and working very hard helps one achieve success despite constant context switching".
michaelochurch 11y ago
This seems like the opposite of the Four-Hour Work Week (which I also don't buy, because while most office jobs can be compressed into 4 hours/week, most worthwhile work can't) in the sense of the emphasis on multitasking and working hard early in order to be able to relax later. I do think that there's value in it. If you genuinely enjoy what you do, you work in a low-stress environment, and you're not a subordinate, you can work 60-70 hours per week continuously without ill effects. If you have a regular office job in an open-plan environment, and you're a subordinate, then a 60-hour week will murder you over time. If you call the shots over your own work (there's always a boss, so the distinction of "not a subordinate" is more about degree and the people around you than formal reporting structure) then you can work harder and much more efficiently than typical disengaged office workers and it won't hurt you. An important concept, that I've cribbed from Havel, is Living in Truth. At some point, I realized (to my annoyance) how much of an advantage the rich kids had in the career game. (Growing up in Central PA, I thought I was a "rich kid". Then I worked in finance in NYC.) They worked as hard as anyone else-- I'll never say that they didn't-- but it was received better and led to rapid promotion. If you're from a middle-class background and bust your ass, your bosses assume that it's because you want money and to be like them, and that doesn't really endear you to them. If you're already from a rich family, then people assume that you have a genuine work ethic when you put in the 40-55 hours that is taken for granted from everyone else. So, I started thinking about it, and I realized that, most of the time, it's not obvious what peoples' actual backgrounds were. No one consciously favors the rich kids; it's the confidence and status that they carry with them that gives them the advantages. They expect to be treated with respect, even by powerful people, and most of the time, that's what happens. Paradoxically, the people who didn't fear their bosses or take the corporate nonsense too seriously were the ones who got ahead. That's when I realized that it's possible to act as if you were economically free-- to work only on the stuff that matters, either because it advances your career or because it helps someone or some cause that you care about-- and, most of the time, to get away with it. If you're ethical and hard-working but, at the same time, don't allow anyone to lower your status, ever, you definitely invite short-term rockiness (see: my Google experience) but people respect you more in the long term. Obviously, you have to be tactful and sometimes a bit political. When something not worth doing gets dropped on your plate, you need to find a way to get higher-priority and valuable stuff on it... I bring this up because it's impossible to be efficient if you don't live in truth. You'll have recurring commitments and drudge work delegated onto you, and eventually the only escape will be to change jobs and, since you're going to be tired and bitter by that point, you'll get a mediocre raise (the 3-5% per year that you didn't get where you were) but no real promotion. I don't know the OP, but I'm guessing that he mastered the art of Living in Truth. For example, in an hour-long status meeting, he probably had a rehearsed and compact 2-minute update that didn't invite follow-on questions (status meetings are like Scrabble; good players aren't trying to drop 100-point words so much as they're trying not to open up the board) and 58 minutes to work on stuff that actually mattered. And while there's a lot that's in productivity literature that isn't replicable for most people, I think that the general concept of Living in Truth has a great deal of value.
swalsh 11y ago
I have two distinct experiences giving a presentation to "executives". One was a CEO who is very widely known, and has a lot of respect. The other just got promoted after the person above him got axed. When I presented to the first guy, everyone else in the room was half listening, on their laptops "multi-tasking". He was giving me 100% of his focus. When the demo was over he shot me several really insightful questions. No one else had any substantive comments. The second he spent the whole meeting writing an email on his phone. When the demo was over, he said "great work, keep it up", got up, and excused himself. One of these guy is a multi-millionaire, the other is unemployed.
singold 11y ago
I find it interesting that writing this post he is using his own advice Because this will help him In his task of helping his spouse to do the same
recycleme 11y ago
I can empathize with others in this thread saying that his lifestyle is unhealthy (which is probably based on the anti-workaholic ideals a lot of us hold). However, he is just describing what worked for him to get to where he is and he seems to have accomplished a lot. Not only that, he describes how he is keeping himself healthy. One reason for his success is that he multitasks well, whereas humans typically do not. This enables him to work the way he did/does. The top post at the moment states that he will cause the "detriment of his quality of life." Actually, it seems he has improved his quality of life significantly (he left his corporate job, has more time to spend with his family, etc.). The top post OP also mentions not finishing the article so he may have missed all that. Someone else stated that he is just boasting about "how awesome" he is. I did not get this vibe, but from my perspective, he is someone who has the confidence to speak about his subject. Which is completely fine. You should have a level of confidence when it comes to your craft and there's nothing wrong with that. As stated in this article, this might not work for everyone. This is true, people work differently. Some people, oddly enough, don't need breaks. I do. And so on..
- emodendroket 11y ago
  > One reason for his success is that he multitasks well, whereas humans typically do not. This enables him to work the way he did/does. But this is self-reported and multitaskers are known to significantly overrate their own performance.
  - recycleme 11y ago
    Yes, it is self-reported but the evidence is there to back it up.
    - emodendroket 11y ago
      Is it really? Maybe he would be producing much better work if he were to focus. We don't really have the information to judge.

118 points by henrik_w 11y ago

pmx 11y ago

Task switching absolutely kills my productivity but I think that may be down to procrastination. I procrastinate more than I would like and once I've gotten myself going I need to keep momentum. If something kills that momentum - like switching tasks, I'll quickly find myself checking my email or looking on Reddit, PH, or HN again.

frandroid 11y ago
Procrastination is a form of task-switching, you're just switching into things that are less productive. :) I'm trying to improve on that matter too.
falcolas 11y ago
Task switching tends to kill software development productivity, period. My own personal experience mirrors that outlined in the "Human Task Switches Considered Harmful"[0] blog post; interruptions can takes minutes or hours to recover from, leaving me functionally unproductive for this time that I'm re-building my mental context. The OP even admits to this ("That’s not just for the sake of clean audio, but it’s for my own concentration"), they just seem content to accept the lack of attention for most of their tasks. Personally, I've found that I am much more productive when I focus on one task to completion (or to a natural stopping point) and then switch tasks. In series, I can complete a set of tasks in a fraction of the time it would take to complete them in parallel. Also, my colleagues on phone calls tend to appreciate my attention to what they are saying. [0] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000022.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000022.html
fizixer 11y ago
It's a fallacy to assume if you're not able to task-switch efficiently, there's something wrong with you and nothing to do with the nature of your work. As an example, Feynman would avoid distractions as much as he could, would make excuses to stay away from administrative duties at Caltech to dedicate solid chunks of time to his research work. And when you're thinking in abstractions while programming, interruptions and task-switching is the last thing you could afford in order to stay productive.

fweespeech 11y ago

> I often worked until 1am. I’d usually start at 6am. I always worked on weekends, albeit with leaving time for family activities as well. The laptop came on every holiday and I had to work very hard at balancing productivity with time out. Like I say, that’s not very palatable to many people but this is what it took for me to get this amount of stuff done. Does anyone else feel like this falls under a combination of "workaholic" and luck of genetics? Even with caffeine, I simply can't do two nights in a row with less than 7 hours of sleep and retain a level of mental acuity I need to "work" effectively. Of course he may not be meaning this literally but I have the feeling the way that is written he is.

JimiofEden 11y ago
Perhaps, but I've fallen both in and out of this mindset, so I think it might have more to do with your state of mind. In my mind at the time, something needed to get done. And I was the only one that could do it. And I'm too proud to admit failure, so damn the torpedoes, and full steam ahead, about a weeks worth of no sleep, caffeine induced, coding frenzy. Both before and after that experience however, I'm the opposite. Unless it's a task that I own, and I feel like I NEED to do, and won't rest until it's done, then it's whatever man. Let me sleep. So for my situation, maybe it's all about getting yourself into that mindset and hyping yourself up for something. (Though all things considered, I was mega burnt out after what I did and would not ever try it again.)
- fweespeech 11y ago
  Perhaps. Out of curiosity, were you doing something that had a high-cost-per-defect? [e.g. All bugs lead directly to a loss of money for the company and/or accounting uncertainty on exactly where the money/inventory went]? The reason I ask is generally the only people I ever see saying stuff like that tend to be engaging in projects with low-risk-defects that don't translate to 4-5 figures of financial losses per defect but rather a "meh, I'll spend an hour later figuring it out and it costs me basically $0" kind of defects.
vtlynch 11y ago
What I find striking about this, and other parts of the article, is how they seem like they must be contradictory. He spent 19 hours of his day working? Thats exceptional. A feat I certainly couldnt achieve. But... he also spent an hour and a half playing high intensity tennis and/or taking regular walks to the shops near his house? That dosent sound like 19 hours of work to me. And he balanced his personal life and relationships whilst working 19 hours a day? Or did his family only see the benefits in the last 18 months (as he states near the end of the article)? So often when I read these "hack your life/productivity" articles and actually try to figure out the logistics, it just does not seem to check out.

fideloper 11y ago

Having known people exactly like this, I'm going to guess that Troy is blind to the people he affects around him while he is working so "hard" and jumping around so much. Unless he has some super-human abilities, doing things like stopping to "churn out a para or two" is NOT helping his productivity. I'd guess he's succeeding despite of that workflow (many hours spent) instead of because of it. > "That might mean being on a conference call and also responding to emails (I’m happy listening and writing at the same time)". The people who I know did this missed very important details of meetings, and even has to be clued in that someone was speaking to them. They constantly relied on others around them to pay attention to the important details of any meeting. Definitely led to confusion and issues (and blaming). I stopped reading after the first section because all of this brought back memories (and a really strong negative reaction) of such crazy ridiculous ego's I've worked with in the passed. I won't believe Troy is doing life better than us. He's working (very hard!) and will be successful, but at the cost of others around him and ultimately to the detriment of his quality of life.

fweespeech 11y ago
To be fair, I've known a handful of people who can do that effectively without getting lost. However, I'd say they are the minority and its really a "luck of genetics" thing rather than a learned skill. No one I've met who claims it was a skilled they learned actually can do it. I'm willing to believe people exist who do, but I suspect they fall under the "luck of genetics" category and just convinced themselves they learned it. Or it could be a mix of both. However, 90% of people I've met that do it do meet the OP's "blindspot" criteria.
- fideloper 11y ago
  Genetics would def. be part of it, I think that's fair. One person I'm thinking of in particular is VERY intelligent, which (unfortunately for those around them) helps them cope with (get away with) this behavior.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
11y ago

ericson578 11y ago

After reading that article it did not answer the question of how he made his job redundant. It did tell me to hyper multi task and be more efficient (wow ground breaking /s). Am I being obtuse? Was there an answer in there that I missed? I was really curious how he quit his day job...

jimmy0x52 11y ago
Same. I was looking for how he was able to survive financially and quit his job. It just seemed like many paragraphs of bragging and rambling (and boasting about his speaking/blogging engagements).
- dharma1 11y ago
  maybe he started writing about that but got sidetracked context switching :)
  - MyNameIsFred 11y ago
    After 2 years on HN, I finally created an account so I could upvote this comment.
- UK-AL 11y ago
  Conferences/talks/pluralsight/consulting. His a big name in ms world, so he could do it pretty easily.
- mgiannopoulos 11y ago
  You can check the first link in his post where he explains more of that http://www.troyhunt.com/2015/05/so-dust-has-finally-settled.html http://www.troyhunt.com/2015/05/so-dust-has-finally-settled.... as well as the first link in that post http://www.troyhunt.com/2015/04/today-marks-two-important-milestones.html http://www.troyhunt.com/2015/04/today-marks-two-important-mi... :)
rwallace 11y ago
You might have missed it among all the bad advice about multitasking and working stupid hours, but he did give one piece of good advice in all that. His job was to do with systems administration/operations, and what he did was to write down everything he knew or had to learn about how to do his job, in the form of public blog posts, which he refined based on public feedback until they actually worked and were understandable. Then on the way out the door, all he had to do was give his successor the keys and the URL to the blog posts.

us7892 11y ago

>> I’m happy listening and writing at the same time Right. Stop multi-tasking in our meeting when you should be paying close attention and participating. I'm tired of having to repeat myself because you're writing an email.

mcdougle 11y ago
As others have said in this thread, it's entirely possible (and, in a corporate setting, very probable) that he could've been writing an email during a time in the meeting where is attention wasn't needed. I can tell you that there have been plenty of meetings I've been in where I'm hard at work on something actually important while listening at the same time, because I know I'm not missing anything. I know which meetings are important and require my full attention (a requirements meeting for a new project, for example) compared to something I can just kinda half-listen to (e.g. the weekly team meeting where everyone discusses what they've worked on since the last meeting)

Xophmeister 11y ago

85 percent of your financial success is due to skills in "human engineering," your personality and ability to communicate, negotiate, and lead. Shockingly, only 15 percent is due to technical knowledge. -- Carnegie Institute of Technology Uh oh...

s3nnyy 11y ago

He claims that he is using a Lenovo W540 "for punching out emails laying on the couch". My colleagues and I are forced by our employer to use the exact same model and everybody hates it. Lenovo omitted designated buttons and as a result the navigation is a mess: One clicks, if one wants to scroll and vice versa. Maybe Troy is using a mouse when he works from the couch?

briandear 11y ago

I don't know this guy; I've never heard of him until now, but based on what's I've seen, the theme seems to be "how awesome I am." Something about this rubbed me the wrong way, like a lesser version of Tim Feriss. We get it; you're really busy. Multitasking is less efficient: http://simple.icouch.me/the-waiting-room/multitasking-psychology-get-more-done-by-doing-less http://simple.icouch.me/the-waiting-room/multitasking-psycho...

theklub 11y ago
Yeah, those are the types of people who are like "You too can be rich just like me, buy my ten step book to learn how!"

cosmolev 11y ago

So, basically the guy is a CPU.

brightball 11y ago

I'm terrible with task switching also and have had to do some reduction in my side stuff to keep my sanity. I have code projects that I want to build, but I can't focus on those while focusing on the code for my full time job that is by far primary. I had a programming business with a lot of legacy contracts when I shut it down to go work full time, so I sold off the business to another guy just because it was killing my focus. Now I blog and present about a lot of tech related topics where in almost every situation it's something that overlaps with my full time job. That way, just as he's describing, I'm more thoroughly researching and articulating things that will pay dividends at work as well. The overlap makes it like getting paid (sometimes) for side research that I would have done anyway and it keeps me sane. Also makes it easier for my wife to understand me spending time outside of work reading about this stuff. :-)

aesthetics1 11y ago

This almost made me sick. This article is pages of bragging basically. "Check out all my things", "I have money and can buy other people's time", "I quit my job", "Here's a pic of my wife". His tips? Give me a break.

juliangregorian 11y ago
Haters gonna hate. He figured out how to milk Pfizer for a salary to underwrite him while he built his personal brand. So what if his github account is weak, this guy hacks life.
SZJX 11y ago
True. This guy surely has a massive ego and talks all the way about "earning money", "building brand" and "socialization" and stuffs, which I don't think a reliable engineer in his right mind would put first. Not to mention the "ending quote". Some of what he wrote might be a bit helpful but the base tone just doesn't sound right for some reason.

kriro 11y ago

The post only implicitly answered how the job was made redundant. I'm assuming he lives off what used to be sideincome (consulting, training courses, blogging etc.) now? The way he works sounds pretty unhealthy (or at least it would be for me) and is often the exact opposite to what I strive for. I don't write mails while waiting I let my mind wander around and try to "do nothing". I have batches for handling email and don't check outside those times (surprisingly the world doesn't stop if you don't answer email for most mails). If I'm in a meeting, I'm in the meeting. If the meetings seem irrelevant the right course of action is trying to get rid of the meetings not hanging around but writing mail (imo) Basically feels like he needs to "actively do stuff all the time". I'm quite the opposite and try to actively do nothing (my brain will work really well during those times but it's not looking active). And when I'm doing something I try to optimize doing exactly that and not squeezing in other stuff.

cylinder 11y ago
I would lose my mind if I was like this all the time. Sometimes it feels great to be very busy as you get a nice flow and momentum going that leads to more productivity. But I need downtime to retreat into my head. I don't answer phones or emails on weekends. Guess I'm destined to be poor.

jimwalsh 11y ago

So this guy works a ton of hours, after work hours. He works from home it appears. He is constantly double dipping his time multiple ways. How does this actually effect his family life? Some of this write up makes him come off incredibly selfish with his time.

mgiannopoulos 11y ago
"How does this actually effect his family life?" It's probably where the wife part of his article comes in.

JamesBarney 11y ago

Most research on multi-tasking shows that the difference between self described multi-taskers and others is not the ability to multi-task but the awareness of cognitive deficits induced by multi tasking. My take away from the article is "having a supporting wife, multi-purposing, and working very hard helps one achieve success despite constant context switching".

michaelochurch 11y ago

This seems like the opposite of the Four-Hour Work Week (which I also don't buy, because while most office jobs can be compressed into 4 hours/week, most worthwhile work can't) in the sense of the emphasis on multitasking and working hard early in order to be able to relax later. I do think that there's value in it. If you genuinely enjoy what you do, you work in a low-stress environment, and you're not a subordinate, you can work 60-70 hours per week continuously without ill effects. If you have a regular office job in an open-plan environment, and you're a subordinate, then a 60-hour week will murder you over time. If you call the shots over your own work (there's always a boss, so the distinction of "not a subordinate" is more about degree and the people around you than formal reporting structure) then you can work harder and much more efficiently than typical disengaged office workers and it won't hurt you. An important concept, that I've cribbed from Havel, is Living in Truth. At some point, I realized (to my annoyance) how much of an advantage the rich kids had in the career game. (Growing up in Central PA, I thought I was a "rich kid". Then I worked in finance in NYC.) They worked as hard as anyone else-- I'll never say that they didn't-- but it was received better and led to rapid promotion. If you're from a middle-class background and bust your ass, your bosses assume that it's because you want money and to be like them, and that doesn't really endear you to them. If you're already from a rich family, then people assume that you have a genuine work ethic when you put in the 40-55 hours that is taken for granted from everyone else. So, I started thinking about it, and I realized that, most of the time, it's not obvious what peoples' actual backgrounds were. No one consciously favors the rich kids; it's the confidence and status that they carry with them that gives them the advantages. They expect to be treated with respect, even by powerful people, and most of the time, that's what happens. Paradoxically, the people who didn't fear their bosses or take the corporate nonsense too seriously were the ones who got ahead. That's when I realized that it's possible to act as if you were economically free-- to work only on the stuff that matters, either because it advances your career or because it helps someone or some cause that you care about-- and, most of the time, to get away with it. If you're ethical and hard-working but, at the same time, don't allow anyone to lower your status, ever, you definitely invite short-term rockiness (see: my Google experience) but people respect you more in the long term. Obviously, you have to be tactful and sometimes a bit political. When something not worth doing gets dropped on your plate, you need to find a way to get higher-priority and valuable stuff on it... I bring this up because it's impossible to be efficient if you don't live in truth. You'll have recurring commitments and drudge work delegated onto you, and eventually the only escape will be to change jobs and, since you're going to be tired and bitter by that point, you'll get a mediocre raise (the 3-5% per year that you didn't get where you were) but no real promotion. I don't know the OP, but I'm guessing that he mastered the art of Living in Truth. For example, in an hour-long status meeting, he probably had a rehearsed and compact 2-minute update that didn't invite follow-on questions (status meetings are like Scrabble; good players aren't trying to drop 100-point words so much as they're trying not to open up the board) and 58 minutes to work on stuff that actually mattered. And while there's a lot that's in productivity literature that isn't replicable for most people, I think that the general concept of Living in Truth has a great deal of value.

swalsh 11y ago

I have two distinct experiences giving a presentation to "executives". One was a CEO who is very widely known, and has a lot of respect. The other just got promoted after the person above him got axed. When I presented to the first guy, everyone else in the room was half listening, on their laptops "multi-tasking". He was giving me 100% of his focus. When the demo was over he shot me several really insightful questions. No one else had any substantive comments. The second he spent the whole meeting writing an email on his phone. When the demo was over, he said "great work, keep it up", got up, and excused himself. One of these guy is a multi-millionaire, the other is unemployed.

singold 11y ago

I find it interesting that writing this post he is using his own advice Because this will help him In his task of helping his spouse to do the same

recycleme 11y ago

I can empathize with others in this thread saying that his lifestyle is unhealthy (which is probably based on the anti-workaholic ideals a lot of us hold). However, he is just describing what worked for him to get to where he is and he seems to have accomplished a lot. Not only that, he describes how he is keeping himself healthy. One reason for his success is that he multitasks well, whereas humans typically do not. This enables him to work the way he did/does. The top post at the moment states that he will cause the "detriment of his quality of life." Actually, it seems he has improved his quality of life significantly (he left his corporate job, has more time to spend with his family, etc.). The top post OP also mentions not finishing the article so he may have missed all that. Someone else stated that he is just boasting about "how awesome" he is. I did not get this vibe, but from my perspective, he is someone who has the confidence to speak about his subject. Which is completely fine. You should have a level of confidence when it comes to your craft and there's nothing wrong with that. As stated in this article, this might not work for everyone. This is true, people work differently. Some people, oddly enough, don't need breaks. I do. And so on..

emodendroket 11y ago
> One reason for his success is that he multitasks well, whereas humans typically do not. This enables him to work the way he did/does. But this is self-reported and multitaskers are known to significantly overrate their own performance.
- recycleme 11y ago
  Yes, it is self-reported but the evidence is there to back it up.
  - emodendroket 11y ago
    Is it really? Maybe he would be producing much better work if he were to focus. We don't really have the information to judge.